STATCOUNTER

October 2018

Yes, I realize that there are still a couple of months left till 2019. But it difficult to believe that any new headline will beat this one for sheer chutzpah. (Look it up.)

How can any product claim to be loved by all Americans? Heck, how can anything claim to be loved by all Americans. Then Nestlé doubles down on its arrogance by adding that “everyone has grown to love” (it).

And they finish by declaring that this is the “Crunch Generation.”

This is all so absurd on so many levels that I am trying to figure out if they have perhaps confused Halloween with April Fool’s Day and this is meant to be a spoof.

“All Americans.” “Everyone.” “The Crunch Generation.” Does any of this ring true? No, it seems as if they have confused hyperbole with absurdity.

Sotheby’s International Realty recently ran this ad. And though I have little interest in the subject, I read it all the way through. (Still not sure why.)

All was good till I got to this sentence (emphasis added): “We understand unlike any other that a home is an investment in your future – a statement about how you and your family want to live and where you will create countless lasting memories.”

My initial interpretation was that the “unlike any other” was referring to other realty firms. Which seemed an unprovable, superlative claim. So I read it again, and realized that what they were actually attempting to say with the “unlike any other” was to refer to the unique position that a home plays as an investment.

Which, to me, meant that they should have written it this way: “We understand that – unlike any other investment in your future – a home is a statement about how you and your family want to live and where you will create countless lasting memories.”

A small difference, but a meaningful one. So maybe the lesson is that after you spell check and grammar check, it may make sense to read it one more time, as a clarity check to make sure you are saying what you want to be saying.

I read an interesting article recently about the possibly damaging effects of events that are low risk, but high frequency. One example was as straightforward as your daily shower. Each individual shower probably poses no major risk. But because it is done so frequently, the risk of hurting yourself, especially for the elderly, is much higher than for something that occurs rarely, even if that occasional event is seemingly more dangerous.

Sort of like being hit by lightning is not a good thing, but since it is such a rare occurrence, we aren’t too concerned about it.

That got me thinking about marketing, as many seemingly unrelated things so often do. Let’s say you have the choice of doing a bunch of ads, or, with the same budget, doing one big bang. I think the creative temptation, if you do a collection of high frequency insertions, is to err toward the safe, with the expectation that the sheer volume of exposure will work its selling magic. As opposed to saving your (many) pennies and betting it all on something like a Super Bowl commercial, with the potential for an outsized payoff.

In the best of all possible worlds you would do clever and frequent. But it rarely works out that way. The tendency is to work especially hard on the big, splashy effort, with the enormous budget.

But why not go for high frequency, and if not high, then at least elevated risk? It may be a tough choice between the two, but that’s where I would put my money.

While it may be a good idea to sell the benefit of a paper towel that is strong enough to use, wring out and then re-use, it is not a good idea to show it first being used to clean the floor and then cleaning a frying pan.

If cleaning the floor is their version of a “torture test,” then following it up by wiping a cooking utensil is my version of “yuck.”

If they had simply reversed the visual sequences, it would have been fine.